A for Athlete Wikia

#dfabhistory2day: On February 15, 1961, the entire 18-member U.S. figure skating team is killed in a plane crash in Berg-Kampenhout, Belgium. The team was on it...s way to the 1961 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Among those killed in the crash was 16-year-old Laurence Owen, who had won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship in the ladies’ division the previous month. She was featured on the February 13, 1961, cover of Sports Illustrated, which called her the most exciting U.S. skater. Bradley Long, the 1961 U.S. men’s champion, also perished in the crash, as did Maribel Owen (Laurence’s sister) and Dudley Richards, the 1961 U.S. pairs champions, and Diane Sherbloom and Larry Pierce, the 1961 U.S. ice dancing champions. Also killed was 49-year-old Maribel Vinson-Owen, a nine-time U.S. ladies’ champion and 1932 Olympic bronze medalist, who coached scores of skaters, including her daughters Maribel and Laurence. Vinson-Owen also coached Frank Carroll, who went on to coach the 2010 men’s Olympic gold medalist Evan Lysacek and nine-time U.S. champion Michelle Kwan. In addition to the skaters, 16 people accompanying them, including family, friends, coaches and officials, were killed. The other 38 passengers and crew aboard Sabena Flight 548, which left New York on the night of February 14, also died when the plane went down around 10 a.m. in clear weather while attempting to make a scheduled stopover landing at the Belgian National Airport in Brussels. One person on the ground, a farmer working in the field where the Boeing 707 crashed in Berg-Kampenhout, several miles from the airport, was killed by some shrapnel. Investigators were unable to determine the exact cause of the crash, although mechanical difficulties were suspected. The tragedy devastated the U.S. figure skating program and meant the loss of the country’s top skating talent. Prior to the crash, the U.S. had won the men’s gold medal at every Olympics since 1948 (when Dick Button became the first American man to do so), while U.S. women had claimed Olympic gold in 1956 and 1960. After the crash, an American woman (Peggy Fleming) would not capture Olympic gold until 1968, while a U.S. man (Scott Hamilton) would not do so until 1984. The incident was the worst air disaster involving a U.S. sports team until November 1970, when 37 players on the Marshall University football team were killed in a plane crash in West Virginia. Shortly after the 1961 crash, the U.S. Figure Skating Memorial Fund was established; to date, it has provided financial assistance to thousands of elite American skaters. In 2011, the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, the 18 members of the 1961 figure skating team, along with the 16 people traveling with them to Prague, were inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The View From 33 Feet Above CORAL GABLES, Fla. 33 feet above the pool deck is where you’ll find Zach Cooper, most of the time. Anyone passing through the Whi...tten Center Pool knows it has been that way, with Cooper positioned on one of campus’ most scenic perches, since 2017. But while the board hasn’t changed in the last four years, the person standing on top of it certainly has. Cooper will be the first one to admit as much. It’s an adjustment, becoming a college student-athlete, Cooper said. I was home schooled ever since fourth grade. Coming to college, it’s sort of difficult to get used to everything again, to move back into a ‘normal’ school setting. Four years later, Cooper is almost unrecognizable, thriving on the boards and in the classroom, as an economics major with a sports administration minor. cont'd - - - https://miamihurricanes.com///the-view-from-33-feet-above/

#dfabhistory2day: Fifty years ago today, on February 6, 1971, Alan Shepard hits some golf balls on the Moon as part of the Apollo 14 mission. Since bringing a g...olf club wouldn't have been allowed, he had connected the head of a six-iron to the shaft of a piece of rock collecting equipment, covering it with a sock so it wouldn't be discovered before launch. Despite thick gloves and a stiff spacesuit, which forced him to swing the club with one hand, Shepard struck two golf balls, driving the second, as he jokingly put it, "miles and miles and miles". Analysis of high-resolution film scans of the event determined the distance to be about 40 yards (37 m).

I'm working with a new editor to re-edit and revise my book. It's a ton more work. But it will totally be worth it. Why are we doing this for a 4* book that's s...old so well already? (Top 100 in cycling on Amazon) Because the book is that good, and this will make it even better. Soon to come: options for new covers. Can't wait to hear what you think, and which you'd like to see!

#dfabhistory2day: On February 3, 2002, the New England Patriots shock football fans everywhere by defeating the heavily favored St. Louis Rams, 20-17, to take h...ome their first Super Bowl victory. Pats’ kicker Adam Vinatieri made a 48-yard field goal to win the game just as the clock expired. And THAT was the last time that Brady, Bellichick & the Pats were a Cinderellateam. Super Bowl XXXVI took place at the Superdome in New Orleans with a crowd of almost 73,000 in attendance. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, the game was played amidst intense security and included a tribute to the 9/11 victims. Former President George H.W. Bush conducted the coin toss, the first president to ever do so in person. Mariah Carey sang the National Anthem and U2 performed during the halftime show. The NFC champion Rams were coached by Mike Martz, who joined the team in 1999 as offensive coordinator and became head coach in 2000. The team’s offensenicknamed The Greatest Show on Turfwas believed to be one of the best in football history. Kurt Warner, a two-time NFL MVP, quarterbacked the Rams, who had won their first Super Bowl in 2000. The American Football Conference champion Patriots were coached by Bill Belichick, who joined the team in 2000, the same year quarterback Tom Brady was drafted. Brady took over for Pats’ starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe after he was injured early in the 2001-2002 season, and Belichick made the decision to stay with the younger quarterback even after Bledsoe recovered, a call that initially met with controversy. (Bledsoe did play in the AFC Championship game, after Brady was forced to leave with an injury.) Going into the Super Bowl on February 3, the Rams’ high-powered offense and Super Bowl experience combined to make them 14-point favorites. True to form, the Rams scored first, but by halftime, the underdog Patriots had stifled the Rams offense, and capitalized on two St. Louis turnovers to pull ahead, 14-3. The Pats converted another Rams turnover into a 17-3 lead in the third quarter before the Rams finally seemed to come alive. Warner ran in a touchdown and then connected with wide receiver Ricky Proehl with just one minute, 30 seconds remaining to tie the score. In the end, though, it proved too little, too late: Brady deftly led the Pats on a 53-yard drive and into field goal range, and with seven seconds left on the clock, Adam Vinatieri kicked a 48-yard field goal to give the Pats the victory, 20-17. It was the first time a Super Bowl had ever been won with a team scoring as the game clock expired. (Colts kicker Jim O'Brien kicked a game-winner in Super Bowl V, but there were five seconds left in the game.)

They called him the Black Sparrow, and from the beginning of his life, all he wanted to do was get to France. He was born in Georgia, his father descended from ...Haitian slaves, his mother full-blooded Creek. He ran away while still a child, determined to fulfill his destiny. He lived for a time with a group of English Romani, learning the art of horsemanship and working as a jockey. He kept traveling and working until he made his way to Norfolk, where he stowed away on a ship bound for Scotland. He wouldn't see America again for thirty years. In Glasgow he got work as a lookout for gambling operators, saving money until he had enough to get to England: one country closer to his goal. In Liverpool he did hard labor until his muscles developed and he turned to boxing. He became part of a whole expat community of Black boxers some of the finest fighters in history who had fled to Europe to find opportunities denied them in the States. Soon he was fighting regularly as a welterweight, racking up an impressive record, even fighting on the undercard of a few Jack Johnson bouts. His boxing career earned him a decent amount of money, and eventually took him to Paris, where he won his bout and promptly hopped off the tour. He was home. Imagine, if you will, being a young, handsome Black/Creek man, escaped from the American South, newly arrived in Paris in the springtime with your own apartment and a pocketful of money. Then imagine it is 1914. Fighting for France was a no-brainer. After all, in his heart at least, it was his country. He joined the French Foreign Legion, training to fight in the 3rd Marching Division alongside wealthy Ivy Leaguers, mariners, farmers, doctors, executives, refugees, cooks, and plenty of characters from all over the world running from undisclosed situations. These were Belgians, Italians, Russians, Greeks, Americans, a handful of Black Americans; Muslims, Catholics, Jews and Protestants the legendary rabble of the Legion. Sent directly to the front along the Somme, he was thrust into a world of filthy, bloody trenches still filled with the body parts of the dead and the rancid smell of shit and blood as his unit experienced some of the worst losses of the war. At the end of this stint, what was left of the 3rd was disbanded and he had only the briefest respite before he joined the 170th Cavalry and was sent straight to Verdun to participate in what would become one of the worst battles in the history of the human race. (The 170th were known to the Germans as "the black swallows," due to folkloric associations of the swallow with misfortune, and during his service he picked up another name, separate but similar from the Black Sparrow: "the Black Swallow of Death.") Now a corporal, he led a machine-gun crew and again was front-and-center for the worst of the fighting, suffering first a shrapnel wound to the face that he simply fought through, then finally sidelined by a massive, nearly fatal wound to his thigh that finally sent him away from the front. Decorated with the Croix de Guerre for his valor at Verdun one of France’s highest military honors he was well within his rights to find a desk job in the military. He had other ideas. He wanted to fly. Already viewed as a hero, he was able to pull the necessary strings to enter flight school, and became the first Black American fighter pilot in history. He flew a SPAD VII C1 with a distinctive alteration to its appearance. Painted on the outside of the fuselage was a red heart with a dagger through it. Above the heart was his personal slogan, one he would later use for the title of his unpublished memoir: Tout Le Sang Qui Coule Est Rouge; roughly, in English: All Blood Runs Red. He flew with honor and distinction until his career in the air came to an abrupt halt. The Americans had entered the war and the involvement of a certain Dr. Gros, a US Army Major with racist attitudes, led to the end of the Black Sparrow's career as a pilot. But the French continued to celebrate him. He ended this part of his military career with the Military Medal, Croix de Guerre, Volunteer Combat Cross, Medal for Military Wounded (twice), World War I Medal, Victory Medal, Voluntary Enlistment Medal, Battle of Verdun Medal, Battle of Somme Medal, and the American Volunteer with the French Army Medal. And that is when his life got interesting. The Great War over, he found himself in Paris in the 1920s at the onset of the Jazz Age. He got back in shape, took work as a sparring partner and fought a few more times. But it wasn't sustainable with his injuries. So he learned to play the drums and became a jazz musician. He gigged frequently, saved money, and ended up in a business partnership with a biracial American blues singer whose birth name was Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louis Virginia Smith known as "Bricktop" for her red hair. Together, they opened the Le Grand Duc, and thus he became proprietor of the hippest nightclub in the hippest city during the birth of hip. He got married around this time to a Frenchwoman named Marcelle and they had two daughters. For reasons that remained private, Marcelle ended up leaving him with their children, to whom he would remain devoted for the rest of his life, as we will see. But he had to balance the duties of being a single parent with Le Grand Duc and later his other club, L’escradille, which was connected to a boxing gym so that patrons could party, then exercise, take a steam bath, get a massage, and start partying again. To name the personages that frequented his clubs is basically to list the greatest names in art and culture in the renaissance that was the 1920s. Langston Hughes was a busboy and dishwasher. Arthur Wilson you may know him as "Sam" of Casablanca fame was part of the house band. Charlie Chaplin was a favorite. Gloria Swanson. Fatty Arbuckle. The Prince of Wales. Staff would move tables when Fred and Adele Astaire came in to tear up the floor. Picasso would stop by, and Hemingway was there often enough that he wrote about it in "The Sun Also Rises." Josephine Baker could not be missed, and even babysat for the Sparrow. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda were frequent, notorious guests. Cole Porter would come in; he adored the way Bricktop interpreted his songs. When Louis Armstrong encamped in Paris, he and the Sparrow became close. But the good times couldn't last. In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In France, the Deuxième Bureau was created as a counter-intelligence service and the Sparrow was recruited to work with the beautiful Alsatian spy, Cleopatre "Kitty" Terrier, whose father's murder by Germans in the disputed border region had instilled in her a lifelong hatred of German expansionism. Kitty and the Sparrow worked as a team at the club. He would serve tables and play dumb, exploiting German prejudices that would never suspect he was fluent in German. She would flirt her way into privileged information. It was a highly successful (and probably romantic) pairing, but with rationing, blackouts, and other wartime austerity measures, keeping businesses running became harder and harder. He tried. He procured a wagon and would visit markets at the end of the day for discounted goods, throw them in a stew at the club. Come evening he would feed everyone for free, plus a free glass of wine per person and a pack of cigarettes per table. He tried. But of course, things got worse. He pulled his daughters out of their convent school to keep them close. Closed the club. Many were fleeing as the Nazis came storming through Belgium. He wouldn't run. He continued to work with Kitty in the Resistance until 1940, when the Nazis marched down Champs-Élysées and through L'arc de Triomphe. Tens of thousands fled the city only to be bombed from the skies. He left his daughters in the care of Kitty, who promised to do what was necessary to keep them safe, packed his gear, and headed for the frontlines, determined, despite his age and multiple injuries, to find his old unit and rejoin the Legion. When he arrived, it was only to find that his unit had been destroyed. Returning to Paris, he couldn't enter; it had been completely overrun. But he heard rumors that the French 51st was holding out at Orléans. He started off on foot. The roads were full of starved, half-mad refugees. Bombings were frequent. When he got there he discovered that his lieutenant from the last war was the commander of the 51st, and, in what must have felt like the world's worst case of déjà vu, he was once again in charge of a machine-gun crew, fighting the Germans. He fought with his usual bravery. But it was a hopeless last stand. A shell that killed 11 men threw him forty feet and cracked a vertebrae. His fighting days were over. Using his rifle as a crutch, he struck out for a military hospital in Angoulême, trying to stay out of sight. But there was little they could do for him there: painkillers, some bandages, and a few cans of sardines with a suggestion to head for Bordeaux and into Spain which, although Fascist, had maintained official neutrality, and was tacitly allowing Allied rescue efforts on Spanish soil. He made it, somehow, received his first passport, and was put on a Navy ship to finally return to the United States he had fled decades before. Life in Manhattan wasn't easy. He had to start from scratch. He worked odd jobs longshoreman, salesman of French perfume. Through a contact in the State Department he was able to get in touch with Kitty, who was true to her word: his daughters were safe. They came to the States without a word of English between them and moved in with their beloved father in Spanish Harlem. He became involved in Free French groups, working to support General de Gaulle, head of the Free French government in exile, and was also filmed getting beaten by police as part of a human chain to protect Paul Robeson when his concert was disrupted by white supremacists. Times were tight but he was doing okay. His old friend Louis Armstrong came to help, hiring him as a tour manager and occasional drummer. He even tried to recover his club and gym in Paris, but the postwar situation was hopelessly complicated and he had to give up. In 1959, via the French Embassy in New York City, he was made a chevalier (knight) of France. He said at the ceremony, "My services to France could never repay all I owe her. Working at the time as an elevator operator at 10 Rockefeller Plaza, he was wearing his medal on his work uniform when Dave Garroway, the host of The Tonight Show, asked him about it. Naturally amazed by what he heard, Garroway saw that this elegant elevator operator got the day off of work so he could come to his office for an interview. It took a week to confirm facts. They all checked out: the elevator man at 10 Rockefeller Plaza was the first Black American fighter pilot in history and a lot more. He appeared on The Today Show, which led to a slew of other appearances and speaking engagements. At least in parts of America, he became a celebrated figure, his heroism recognized. During his one return visit to Georgia, though, things were not so bright. His family has been scattered. One brother had been lynched by squatters when he'd tried to recover ancestral Creek land. He never returned to the South, living out the rest of his life in New York City. But there was one final honor. In 1960, General Charles de Gaulle, leader of Free France, came to visit Eisenhower. A million people greeted him in the streets when he arrived in New York. Hundreds of children sang "La Marseillaise." He gave speeches at City Hall and the Waldorf Astoria, then went where he truly belonged, to the Seventh Regiment Armory. Five thousand French were there. And the Sparrow. His presence had been requested. After de Gaulle's speech, he looked into the crowd as though searching for a friend. The thousands gathered, and assembled press, may have wondered what was going on as the general left the podium and headed into the sea of faces to find a lone Black man, his chest gleaming with medals. The man stood at attention and saluted. De Gaulle returned the salute. Then the general stuck out his hand and, when it was received, pulled the old soldier into a massive hug. "All our country is in your debt," he said. Crying, the man whose journey began as a stowaway, bound for an uncertain future, sure only that he belonged in France, could only respond, "Merci, mon general. Merci beaucoup." Not long after, he entered the hospital with stomach pains. He'd been ignoring them, but the insistence of his daughters finally prevailed. The cancer was advanced. He turned 66 on October 9, 1961, and died on the 12th. The woman who had been helping him with his memoirs visited him on the day he died. She was crying at the bedside where he lay, seemingly lost to the world he was leaving. Hearing her sobs, his consciousness returned from wherever it had been. He pulled the tube out of his mouth. He had something he wanted to say to her. The old horseman, boxer, soldier, pilot, spy, club-owner, musician, and father turned to his friend and smiled. "Don't fret, honey," he said. "It's easy." His name was Eugene Bullard. They called him the Black Sparrow.

The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall. It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up. Ev...ery time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s OK You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second. Confidence is contagious. unfortunately, so is lack of confidence. - Vince Lombardi If you had told me that we’d get three picks off of Brady, I would’ve thought we’d win the game. We scored only three points off of those turnovers. In addition, we were already in the locker room, metaphorically speaking, when Rodgers was intercepted and then Brady hit Miller for a touchdown with Kevin King defending. The final insult was LaFleur taking the ball out of your MVP’s hands on 4th and 8 when you were within one score and two minutes to play. Why not take the chance, and go for two to tie than to risk putting the ball back in Brady’s hands? Congratulations to Brady and the Bucs, and good luck in the SuperBowl. We’ve lost the NFC Championship four times in the last seven seasons. Sounds to me like that is becoming a habit.

https://www.goerie.com//joyce-quadri-quad-game/6686519002/

This is funny. Even more funny that TB12 put it up. #NFL